Now
by SweetSinger2010
Summary: Sabine held the torn patch of Hera's prison jumpsuit in her hand. "Would now be a good time to tell you I have a lighter and the perfect place we could burn the rest of this?" **Spoilers for "Jedi Night"**


A/N: The good news is that my school district has had off Wednesday, Thursday, and now today (Friday) due to icy weather and so I've been stuck inside doing _looooots_ of writing. The bad news is that I can't seem to dig myself out of this angst hole, so here we are with another depressing fic. I haven't had the emotional wherewithal to re-watch "Jedi Night" or "Dume," so this doesn't exactly line up with what happened that first night after Kanan died. So it's AU-ish? But, eh.

* * *

Now

Sabine jerked awake breathing heavily, swallowing against violent nausea. She was on her feet before she really, consciously decided to be, sprinting out of the cave toward the nearest one of those weird rock formations several yards away. She used one hand to brace against the side of it and the other to knot in the hair at the crown of her head, holding the longest layers out of her face as she doubled over and wretched.

There wasn't much to throw up—she'd only been able to make it through a few sips of water and half a ration bar earlier in the evening. Most of what her body expelled was bile. Hot. Burning. Bitter.

Everything was bitter.

When the dry-heaving stopped, she took a few steps away, placed her back against the rock, sank to the ground, shaking. _Shaking._ Trembling hands wiped the sheen of sweat from her face and she forced herself to try and breathe steadily. She pressed her elbows on drawn-up knees, hands in her hair. She squeezed her streaming eyes closed. A gentle wind was sweeping across Lothal's plains that night, and it helped cool Sabine's burning body. She felt hot, sick, overwhelmed.

She still couldn't believe it. She'd been there, she'd seen it, she'd felt their ship rock in the explosion's shockwave. But she still couldn't _believe_ that Kanan was dead. Her initial burst of anger had given way to numb shock.

She swallowed convulsively as a new wave of nausea gripped hard. She'd never felt anything like it. In muted and dazed horror, she wondered, _Am I pregnant?_

And then she remembered she'd never even remotely come close to doing anything that would _get_ her pregnant and she laughed out loud at her own stupidity. It was a hysterical half-giggle, which quickly turned into something else. Something harsher, heavier. (She refused to acknowledge it was sobbing.)

She replayed the entire day in her mind, reliving every detail, analyzing every tiny decision. Could she have done something differently? Done something to prevent— What if she'd flown the gunship faster toward the fuel depot instead of trying to blend in with Imperial traffic for as long as she had? Every nerve had been thrumming with adrenaline, making her hyper-aware; she'd been able to feel the ship shift as Hera climbed into the cabin, as Kanan set his foot on the step-ladder's bottom rung. She should have lifted off right _then_. She shouldn't have waited for everyone to settle in and buckle their restraints or anything like it was some kind of kriffing public transport shuttle. She shouldn't have done a double-take when she saw the walkers lining up at the edge of the depot. She should have slammed the com panel and screamed at everyone to hang on. _That second and a half could have been the difference._

She turned to the side, throwing herself on her hands and knees as her stomach twisted violently and she was dry-heaving again. Nothing came up and it lasted _too long_ and by the time it stopped, she was crying from the pure misery of having her body drenched with a sickly sweat again, her hands shaking again, her breathing halting and harsh again. She sat up and held her face in her hands, hanging her head between her knees the way she'd been taught years ago when she passed out on the academy's training room floor.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when a cool, damp cloth touched the back of her neck.

"Shhh," someone soothed.

Sabine nodded and she let whoever-it-was (Ezra, she guessed), help her sit fully upright against the rock. She kept her eyes closed so the motion wouldn't trigger any more nausea. The wind stirred and that cool cloth kept sponging gently at her neck, cheeks, and forehead. She concentrated on breathing slowly, inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her lips. She allowed tension to seep from her arms and legs and, little by little, she started to feel more grounded and more like herself. The raging memories of…yesterday faded to something more manageable.

"Your color's back." The relief in that voice was nearly palpable, but the voice wasn't Ezra's. Sabine's eyes flew open and she found herself looking at Hera, the Twi'lek watching her with concern. "Are you with me?"

"Hera," she said in a stunned whisper. For a flicker of a second, she felt ashamed that Hera, after _everything_ she'd just been through, was out here taking care of her; it should have been the other way around. But then she figured she'd needed the distraction. Sabine nodded, answering the question. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm…better."

"Good." Hera gave a short exhale, relieved. She draped the cloth over the back of Sabine's neck and then twisted the cap off a bottle of water she was holding and handed it to her. "Try and drink something."

Sabine took several slow, careful sips, studying Hera while she did so. The full moon cast eerie shadows over her face. To say she looked exhausted was a gross understatement, but her eyes no longer held the tell-tale dullness of someone under the influence of…whatever the Empire had put her under the influence of. That was good, if nothing else was.

"I wasn't asleep," Hera said, filling the silence. "I heard you tossing and turning."

"Mm." Sabine gnawed on her lip before she snorted lightly. "I hate Zeb and Ezra. They've proven time and time again that they can sleep through karking _anything._ "

 _Except for when they can't_ , she added mentally. She knew well and good that they both suffered terrible nightmares sometimes. Hera knew it too, but she didn't say anything about it; easier to pretend that at least _something_ was normal.

Hera tilted her head back, looking at the stars. The smog in the planet's atmosphere had cleared just enough tonight to give an unobstructed view of the brilliant constellations above. It was a small mercy. "I tried to sleep," she said, voice cracking. "But every time I close my eyes—"

Sabine swallowed. "Yeah, me too."

She'd been dreaming about it when she woke up sick—that moment when she'd twisted nearly backward in the gunship cockpit to see Kanan holding back an inferno with his bare hands, holding Hera in mid-air to keep her safe. That moment when she knew she was watching her own heart break.

"Sabine?"

She jerked out of her reverie, not realizing tears were trailing down her cheeks. "Yeah?"

Hera looked at her, looked like she was struggling with what she was about to say. "You need to know that you saved our lives today," she choked at last. "I don't know—if it had been me at the helm, I couldn't have—I couldn't have."

Sabine made a sound that was halfway between a scoff and a sob. "No," she said. She felt her face twitch as she tried desperately to retain composure. "No. If I'd—"

"Your clear-minded focus is the only reason we're sitting here together." The look in her eyes said she was General Syndulla right now, delivering an honest analysis of the mission. "If you'd done anything differently on that ship, anything at all, it would have been all of us dead. You did the right things, Sabine." Her face softened and General Syndulla melted away, Hera taking her place. "All the right things."

Sabine didn't know she'd needed to hear those words from Hera's mouth.

She wanted to say something in reply, she wanted to argue, she wanted to open her mouth and tell Hera how _sorry_ she was, but she couldn't. She just…cried. Which was humiliating and awful to do in front of someone else— _especially_ in front of Hera—but somehow she knew Hera didn't mind. "What—do we—do now?" She asked jerkily as she tried to compose herself.

Hera's brows raised and it wasn't hard to see how lost and bewildered she was herself. "Now," she said after a long pause, "we sit here and we wait until you feel well enough to walk with me back to the cave. That's what we do."

Sabine understood that Hera needed to focus on _this_ moment, not the next ones, if she was going to survive this catastrophic heartbreak. She nodded—and that's when she remembered the cloth still sitting on the back of her neck. She reached back and pulled it into her hand. The edges were jagged and frayed, like it had been ripped by hand. Now that it had dried some, she could feel how scratchy and unpleasant it really was. And it was garish orange.

She inhaled sharply—Hera's prison jumpsuit.

She felt that hot anger reignite in the pit of her stomach and she looked over at Hera with a deadly smile on her lips. "Would now be a good time to tell you I have a lighter and the perfect place we could burn the rest of this?"

Hera laughed, and it was a raw sound. "Now would be a great time."


End file.
